Ferragamo announces the new Renaissance campaign, featuring paintings courtesy of Le Gallerie degli Uffizi. A completely new direction, reconnecting the brand to Florence and its tradition of beauty and innovation.
Members of the new Ferragamo extended community are imagined as timeless protagonists of masterpiece paintings from the Italian Renaissance, while a parallel series of images provide insight into the process: Renaissance a symbol of rebirth, an in the making collective effort.
This transformation was achieved through embracing Italian heritage with daring talent. The interiors of his store at 6683 Hollywood Boulevard were pure Italian Renaissance: walls featuring batik resembling 14th-century tapestries, hand-carved sofas, and luxurious draperies complementing classical columns. Though from the Avellino region near Naples, as an Italian, Salvatore was under the spell of Florence, the “Jewel of the Renaissance”, and imbued with the spirit of that place and time; he understood its power and resonance. So, when a few years later he decided to return to Italy there was only one place that would do: Florence. A new Ferragamo Renaissance had begun.
The Italian Renaissance was a time of intense creativity and new ideas. It celebrated innovation and craftsmanship, and married art and artisan excellence. All this was in evidence at Palazzo Spini Feroni, the home Salvatore gave to Ferragamo in Florence in 1927. Dating back to the 13th-century, the Palazzo, which is still Ferragamo’s headquarters, seemed emblematic of the Florentine bottega, the workshop or studio of the master artists and craftsmen where dialogue and the exchange of ideas and knowledge allowed Renaissance thinkers, intellectuals and artists to develop local philosophy and skills into a global phenomenon.
Multiple rebirths were required along the way – after the Great Depression, after the Second World War – but always the power of creativity prevailed and the “shoemaker to the stars”, as Salvatore became known, like his Renaissance forebears, did enchant the world.
Throughout this time, a creative community fed the founder’s imagination and broadcast his Florence-infused collections. This included not only Salvatore’s fellow craftsmen, but also his extraordinary clientele: the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Eva Perón (years later Madonna would wear Ferragamo when she played Perón in Evita).
Central to the Florentine experience that drove Ferragamo’s creativity, the symbol of the beating heart of the city’s continual celebration of the Renaissance, was the Uffizi. Started by Giorgio Vasari as offices – uffizi – for Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1569, it was one of the earliest modern museums, opening its gallery to the public in 1769 and becoming a museum just under a century later. Throughout the history of the house of Ferragamo in Florence, the Uffizi has been there, a guiding light, reminding the importance of fresh ideas, art, beauty and creativity.
Today Ferragamo is experiencing a contemporary Renaissance and partners with the Uffizi to showcase Creative Director Maximilian Davis ‘collection of sensual, elegant and sophisticated ready-to-wear, shoes and bags for Autumn/Winter 2023, using some of the most famous artworks of the 15th and 16th centuries to act as settings for his work. By placing the sharp tailoring and exquisite suiting, the richly textured fabrics and the bold materials and colours, the Hug bag and the archive inspired gold sandal in the context of works by Bellini, Veronese and Botticelli, Davis has created a dialogue between past and present, where both the spirit of the Renaissance and the world of 21st-century luxury are thrown into different relief by juxtaposition.
